Image display apparatuses equipped with an electron emission cathode of various configurations are conventionally proposed. As an example, the one having a structure whose cross-sectional view is shown in FIG. 1 is known. The display apparatus shown in FIG. 1 is a full-color display apparatus and has multiple stripe-shaped anode electrodes 11106 provided on the inner surface of an anode substrate 11101 and on the anode electrodes 11106 are formed surfaces on which fluorescent materials that emit R, G and B lights are sequentially deposited. On the other hand, on a cathode substrate 11102 facing the anode substrate 11101 are provided FEC arrays 11105 made up of multiple electron emission cathodes (FEC). From these FEC arrays 11105, electrons are emitted in an electric field and these electrons emitted are captured by the anode electrodes 11106 and electrons are supplied to fluorescent materials deposited thereon, thus emitting light. Emission of electrons is generally controlled by this apparatus on the FEC arrays 11105 side and electrons emitted from the FEC arrays 11105 are emitted toward the anode substrate 11104 placed opposite thereto at a predetermined distance kept by a column 11104.
To enable an operation involved in the above-described emission of electrons, this apparatus has a space formed to be in a predetermined degree of vacuum between the anode substrate 11101 and cathode substrate 11102 and the peripheral section of these substrates is sealed with a sealing material 11103 to maintain this degree of vacuum.
The distance t between the anode substrate 11101 and cathode substrate 11102 is set, for example, to several hundred μm and a voltage applied to the anode electrodes 11106 is set, for example, to several hundred V. Moreover, the anode electrodes 11106 are connected to a display control apparatus outside the display apparatus through anode leading electrodes, which are not shown in the figure, and a voltage is applied to the anode electrodes 11106 by the display control apparatus at predetermined timing. Furthermore, cathode electrodes and gate electrodes of the FEC arrays 11105 are also connected to the display control apparatus outside the display apparatus through cathode leading electrodes and gate leading electrodes, which are not shown in the figure and a voltage is applied to these electrodes by the display control apparatus at predetermined timing.
The electron emission section of the above-described image display apparatus is formed by FEC arrays, but various configurations of electron emission devices placed on the electron emission section are proposed. For example, a surface-conduction electron emission device has a simple structure and is easy to manufacture, and therefore has an advantage of making it possible to arrange an array of multiple devices over a large area. Therefore, various applications taking advantage of this feature are under study. An example of this is application to a charge beam source and an image formation apparatus such as a display apparatus, etc. An example of arranging multiple surface-conduction electron emission devices is an electron beam source obtained by arranging surface-conduction electron emission devices in parallel and arranging multiple lines with both ends of individual devices connected with a wire (e.g., the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-1031332 by the applicant of the present application).
With regard to an image formation apparatus such as a display apparatus, a flat type display apparatus using liquid crystal device (LCD) has been widely spreading in recent years instead of a CRT-based one. However, the one using LCD is not of a self light-emitting type and has a problem of requiring a backlight, etc., and therefore a display apparatus of a self light-emitting type is needed.
A display apparatus combining the electron beam source with such multiple surface-conduction electron emission devices arranged and fluorescent materials that emit visible light by means of electrons emitted from this electron beam source can be relatively easily manufactured even with a large screen and can furthermore provide an excellent self light-emitting display apparatus with high-definition display, and therefore it is also desirable from the standpoint of providing a self light-emitting display apparatus.